


a smile that could light up this whole town

by likebrightness



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2019-02-09 18:59:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12894633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likebrightness/pseuds/likebrightness
Summary: “You don’t even know what you—” Cat cuts herself off.Kara thinks Cat’s cute when she’s drunk, even if she’s not making much sense. She tilts her head at Cat, smiles gently. Cat scoffs.“You’re doing it again,” she snaps. Then, immediately, “Call me a car. I want to go home.”





	a smile that could light up this whole town

Cat is in a particular mood this evening. They were on deadline today, and Cat had to pull an entire feature and rewrite another. She’s been furious all day, most of the office avoiding her like the plague. Kara had done what she could to help, and still is. Everything’s been fixed by this point, but Cat’s still at the office, so Kara is still at the office. Only one of them is on her fourth martini.

“Miss Grant,” Kara says gently. “Can I call you a car?”

Cat’s unfocused eyes home in on Kara. She points at her with one finger on the hand holding her drink. “You’re the only reason I didn’t fire Chad today,” she says.

“I know, Miss Grant,” Kara says, because she does, even though his name is Brad.

Cat told Kara to call him to her office, ready to rip the man to shreds. Kara had asked, maybe begged a little, for Cat to eat her lunch first, and if she still wanted to fire him after, she could. Cat had resisted, but she relented when Kara pressured.

“You did that thing,” Cat says.

“What thing?”

Cat gestures widely. There’s not enough left in her glass to slosh out. She says nothing.

“Miss Grant,” Kara says when it becomes clear she’s not going to get an answer to her question. “May I please call you a car?”

“You don’t even know what you—” Cat cuts herself off.

Kara thinks Cat’s cute when she’s drunk, even if she’s not making much sense. She tilts her head at Cat, smiles gently. Cat scoffs.

“You’re doing it again,” she snaps. Then, immediately, “Call me a car. I want to go home.”

Kara does as she asks.

She keeps thinking about it, though. About what Cat meant, what thing she does. Smiling? Cat would think of that as _a thing._ But Kara doesn’t know why, exactly. Did smiling at her prevent her from firing Brad?

She decides to run an experiment.

It takes some trial and error to get it right. The first few times Kara smiles too big, ends up with Cat staring at her, a disgusted look on her face.

“I have no idea what you’re doing but if you insist on doing it, do it elsewhere,” she says.

Kara deflates a little.

Eventually, though, she gets it right, suggests Cat go home at six instead of needlessly staying at the office. She does it with a soft smile, and Cat holds eye contact with her for five seconds before saying, “I suppose I might as well.”

No teeth is the way to do it, Kara decides.

She keeps her smiles small and her requests simple: have some M&Ms instead of a drink, Miss Grant; send Rick a scathing email instead of calling him to your office to berate him, Miss Grant; take a break to call your son, Miss Grant, it will make you feel better. If Cat resists, Kara tilts her head, maybe adjusts her glasses.

It works.

 _Every time_.

Kara feels like a superhero.

Well. Kara _is_ a superhero, but she feels like it for this, too, like it’s a secret superpower that no one else has.

She only uses her powers for good. Mostly for Cat’s good, actually. Kara saves a couple of people’s jobs—saves people’s egos, too, by preventing Cat from tearing them apart—but mostly it’s about Cat herself. Drink more water or less alcohol or take a lunch break no matter how busy the day is.

Kara loves it.

-

On sisters’ night, Kara is at the end of telling Alex a story about Catco’s internet going down for half an hour today and how Kara got Cat to stay calm.

“And she wanted to scream at someone, of course, but I did my smiling thing and so she didn’t.”

“You did your smiling thing?”

“Oh yeah,” Kara says, elated as her spoon hits a hunk of cookie dough in her ice cream. “If I want her to do something she doesn’t want to do, I just have to smile at her in this specific way and she always does it.”

Kara’s busy excavating the cookie dough in her pint of ice cream, doesn’t notice how silent Alex has gone. She cackles when she successfully gets the dough out in a huge bite on her spoon, puts the whole thing in her mouth, and finally looks at her sister. Alex is just staring at her.

“What?” Kara asks, but her mouth is so full only the vowel sound comes out.

“You smile at Cat Grant in a specific way to get her to do whatever you want?”

Well, when it’s put that way it sounds loaded.

Kara swallows her ice cream. She’d have a brain freeze if she were human.

“Not bad stuff,” she says. “Just, like, being more hydrated or, in this case, not yelling at Winn.”

“And it works?” Alex says. “She does whatever you want just because you smile at her?”

“Don’t say it like that, Alex,” Kara says. “It’s not a big deal.”

“How am I saying it?”

“I don’t know, like it’s bad or something,” Kara says. “It’s not bad.”

“I’m not saying it’s bad.”

She doesn’t explain what she is saying, though. She pushes play on The Bold Type instead.

Kara has never thought too hard about _why_ smiling at Cat works so well. But Alex’s reaction makes her think about it. Makes her nervous. Makes her steal the remote and push pause.

“What, you think she—you think Miss Grant—what—” She can’t even form the question.

“Do I think your boss does things for you because you look at her with puppy dog eyes? Yeah, I do.”

“They’re not things _for me._  They’re things for _her_!”

“Oh, so you use your puppy dog eyes to take care of Cat?”

“Yeah—no!” Kara blushes. “ _I_ don’t take care of her. I just encourage her to take care of herself.”

“Because you care about her,” Alex says. “And it works because she thinks you’re cute.”

Kara can feel exactly how red her face is. It matches her cape. “Alex, _no_. That’s _ridiculous_.”

“That’s literally why Danny Parker always did stuff for you in eleventh grade, and you know it,” Alex says. “It’s the same situation.”

Kara has never been more grateful for a fire at a movie theatre.

Not that she’s _grateful_ for property damage or danger to human life or anything, But she shows up and everyone gets out safe and if she stays longer than necessary so she doesn’t have to go back to the conversation with Alex, that’s no one’s business but her own.

-

She decides she’ll test Alex’s theory by asking for something Cat won’t possibly say yes to: letting people go early since it’s Friday. Kara knows it won’t work, not just because Cat doesn’t think she’s cute, but also because Cat would _never_.

Kara suggests it, and Cat stares at her like she’s lost her mind.

Kara knew it, knew it wouldn’t work. She tries harder, just to drive the point home. She tilts her head and her smile goes extra hopeful and she says, “Please, Miss Grant, just this once.”

Cat narrows her eyes at her.

“Honestly, Kiera, this is getting ridiculous.”

“Miss Grant?”

“We are a media company. A news organization. But we should take the afternoon off from that because it’s close to a weekend? News still happens on a weekend, Keira.” Cat rolls her eyes. “You think you can smile at me and I’ll forget that we have responsibilities as journalists, no matter what day it is?”

“I— I wasn’t—”

Cat scoffs. “Please, you’ve been doing it for months.”

Kara freezes, a deer in the headlights.

“I know you probably think it’s cute,” Cat says, standing and heading toward her bar. It’s 11:30 am. Kara does not smile at her and suggest she go for M&Ms instead. “It’s perfectly fine when you’re trying to get me to drink less or you’re suggesting I give edits to an incompetent moron through email instead of an open-door meeting so the entire office can hear how stupid they are. But I’m not going to send people home at noon when there is work to be done.”

Cat’s poured herself two fingers of Scotch. Kara watches her throat work as she swallows.

Kara has no idea what to do now.

“I’m sorry, Miss Grant,” she says. “I’ll get back to work.”

She flees to her desk, because she doesn’t know how to be in the room with Cat anymore. Her heart is racing. The point was to prove Cat didn’t think she was cute. She’s not sure that’s what happened. Cat said she knew Kara probably thought it was cute but she didn’t say if _she_ thought it was.

Cat knew? The whole time? Kara feels less like she has superpowers now.

But if Cat knew what she was doing, and it still worked— does that mean something? Or is that just Kara’s relentless optimism hoping it means something? She does hope. This wasn’t really about proving Cat didn’t think she was cute; it was about hoping Cat does think she’s cute. Kara has had a crush on Cat for longer than she’d like to admit. She has, and she never thought anything would come from it, but what if it could? What if Cat thinks she’s cute?

Kara spends the rest of the day worried about it all. Anxious. And yet still somehow hopeful. She catches Cat looking at her twice, just watching her, and she doesn’t look away when Kara makes eye contact. Kara smiles at her, then remembers that’s what got them into this mess, and she blushes and looks away.

-

Kara never leaves until Cat tells her to go, unless Supergirl duty calls. She stays at her desk as her coworkers file out, as the office gets emptier and emptier. Eventually, it’s just her and Cat.

“Kiera!” Cat calls from her office.

Kara stands, takes a deep breath. It’s going to be fine. She thinks her hands would be sweating if they could.

“Yes, Miss Grant?” Kara says, coming to stand in front of Cat’s desk.

Cat looks at her.

“My apologies for not allowing you to leave at noon, though you did seem to disappear for a while there,” Cat says. Kara was saving a school bus that took a curve too hard. “You may go now.”

Kara sighs. “Yes, Miss Grant,” she says, and turns to go.

She gets an idea before she’s out of Cat’s office. She stops at the door and turns back. Smiles gently.

“Promise you’ll go home soon, too?” She tilts her head for extra effect, wants Cat to know she knows what she’s doing. “Please?”

Cat rolls her eyes. But the apples of her cheeks tinge red.

“Fine,” she says.

 

 

 

-


End file.
